Safari 1: ‘Tukutendereza Yesu’

Back safely Saturday night from our week’s tour of the SW and W of Uganda. It had its moments – not least both highs and lows of travelling with a ‘Be a Blessing Co’ car and driver/s! Planning to post a series of short blogs as we can – this week is our last week and lots of goodbyes to say and loose ends to tie up.



Picture is of Bwama Island on Lake Bunyoni (‘lake of birds’) in the Alpine-like scenery but un-Alpine-like weather of Kigezi – the south-westerly part of Uganda bordering Rwanda and the ‘DRC’ (Demoncratic Republic of Congo). Tranquil Bunyoni is only a few miles from the Rwandan border and the principal town of the region – Kabale – lies across a steep pass to its north.

We spent a couple of nights at a newish backpackers’ resort on Itambira island, paddling out in a dugout, and then spending the time swimming in the bilharzia- and crocodile-free waters, writing journals, and reading. It was especially moving for me to be in the midst of a classic memoir of the East African Revival, 'Quest for the Highest' by Dr Joe Church.

Kabale was as far as I understand the centre for CMS’s Ruanda Mission - in the late 1920s and 1930s establishing mission stations (comprising hospitals and churches) in what was then very remote country with almost no roads and ‘big game’ not restricted by development to reserves as it is today. They carried rifles alongside their Bibles and medicine chests! (Bwama Island was for forty years a leprosarium run by the mission.)

And then in the thirties and forties Christians in Ruanda and SW Uganda saw the outbreak of dramatic revival, an outburst of spiritual energy bringing many to living faith and reviving churches eventually across the whole East African region and beyond. So it was humbling and moving to read last week near its epicentre, from the pen of one of its great leaders, a Cambridge/CICCU doctor, of the revival’s emphases and energy: its stress on the Cross and the Bible, on ‘broken-ness’, public repentance and mutual forgiveness among Christians as the foundation for fellowship and mission, of lives deeply surrendered to Jesus, of the ways in which some in the churches found it too spontaneous, ‘excessive’ and threatening, but also of the spiritual unity between African and European Christians which it generated and which was such a testimony to the world in the middle of the last century.

The revival has left a noticeable lasting legacy for good in the Church of Uganda, not least in a tradition of encouraging naturally and without any embarrassment deep personal commitment to the person of Jesus. One of the songs still regularly sung here is ‘Tukutendereza Yesu’ (‘We Praise You Jesus’) – originally derived from the hymnbook of the Keswick Convention, one of the spiritual ‘headwaters’ for the Revival:

We praise you Jesus,
Jesus lamb of God,
Your blood cleanses me,
I praise you, Saviour.

Tukutendereza Yesu
Yesu Omwana gw’endiga
Omusaigwo gunaziza
Nkwebaza, Omulokozi